My caste? Indian, says Amitabh Bachchan

India

Samyuktha

Posted By: Samyuktha

Published: Wednesday, May 12, 2010, 14:21 [IST]

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Mumbai, May 12: Amid honour killings over caste and the lobbying of the backward class politicians in the Parliament to push for a caste-based Census, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan has declared that his caste is Indian.

In a blog post inspired by his experience with the census enumerators, Bachchan said that he was ready to answer that his caste is Indian.

"From the morning a consensus on the census. Officials from the BMC, the Bombay Municipal Corporation, troop into Prateeksha to detail in on information that shall for the first time in India develop for every citizen the UID - a Unique Identity Card.

All kinds of information is sought name, place, age, dependents, place of birth, house, residence years and on. I wait for them to come to the crucial controversial one - caste. They don't," he wrote.

"Wary of the sensitivity that this has raised recently by politicians, they keep away from it. They reason that they would wait for some government decision on this. I tell them irrespective of what the system decides, my answer is ready - caste, Indian," he added.

On bigb.bigadda.com, the acting legend went on to speak of how his father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, a Hindi poet and litterateur, had opposed the caste system.

"My Father never believed in caste and neither do any of us. He married a Sikh (Teji Bachchan), I married a Bengali (Jaya Bhaduri), my brother a Sindhi (Ramola), my daughter (Shweta) a Punjabi (Nikhil Nanda), my son (Abhishek) a Mangalorean (Aishwarya Rai)... in his autobiography he (Harivansh Rai) had expressed that future generations of his family should marry into different parts of the country. So far that tradition has been kept alive!!" he posted.